Blessed Are They That Have Not Seen!

O happy they whose hearts receive
The implanted word with faith; believe
Because their fathers did before,
Because they learnt, and ask no more.
High triumphs of convictions wrought,
And won by individual thought;
The joy, delusive oft, but keen,
Of having with our own eyes seen,
What if they have not felt nor known
An amplitude instead they own,
By no self-binding ordinance prest
To toil in labour they detest:
By no deceiving reasoning tied
Or this or that way to decide.

O happy they! above their head
The glory of the unseen is spread;
Their happy heart is free to range
Thro’ largest tracts of pleasant change;
Their intellects encradled lie
In boundless possibility.
For impulses of varying kinds
The Ancient Home a lodging finds:
Each appetite our nature breeds,
It meets with viands for its needs.

Oh happy they! nor need they fear
The wordy strife that rages near:
All reason wastes by day, and more,
Will instinct in a night restore.
O happy, so their state but give
A clue by which a man can live;
O blest, unless ’tis proved by fact
A dream impossible to act.